Retirement isn't always easy. I had to retire after about five years ago after
some fifty years of very interesting work. I've sometimes caught myself
waiting for a phone call asking me to come to a meeting in Whitehorse, Inuvik
or wherever. But dammit, that doesn't happen anymore.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Keith Hudson
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION ; Arthur Cordell
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2012 10:07 AM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] The Love of the Law, Still Fulfilled
At 14:46 23/02/2012, Arthur wrote:
Why retire???
Why retire indeed? -- if you can keep the status you've gained from your
fellows during your working life. All is revealed in the very last sentence of
the article:
"I'm called 'Judge' wherever I go," he said. Maybe you cannot put a price on
that.
Keith
======================
February 20, 2012 NY Times
The Love of the Law, Still Fulfilled
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
He has the white hair and the black robe.
But this judge, up on the bench in Queens Supreme Court, is a little
different from most of the other 1,200 in the state's courts. Judge Allen
Beldock, 92, is paid nothing. Zip. Nada. No salary. In this era of budget cuts,
no honorarium.
Not even gas money.
Of course, after 44 years on the bench, coming to work just about every day
is second nature, he said recently, maybe 130 pounds soaking wet, judicial robe
included, leaning back at a desk he uses at the courthouse on Sutphin Boulevard
in Jamaica.
"If I were not a judge, I wouldn't be doing anything," he said. "What would
I be doing if I were not a judge? What am I even qualified to do? I've been a
judge for 44 years. My father was a butcher. I'm not trained to be a butcher."
So, four days a week, Judge Beldock gets into his eight-year-old Chevrolet
Impala, which has seen better days, and makes his way to the courthouse.
Mondays and Tuesdays he shepherds damage suits. Thursdays and Fridays he
supervises jury selection.
Of course, for most of those 44 years, he did get a check, first as a
full-time judge hearing criminal cases, and later, after he officially retired
more than 20 years ago, as a judge paid a daily rate of $300 to handle civil
cases. Then the fiscal crisis hit the courts about a year ago, the budget was
cut and a lot of the retired judges who had been $300-a-day "judicial hearing
officers" went home.
Not Judge Beldock. Like a hardy few other retired judges around the state
one or two in Manhattan, at least one in Brooklyn he has continued with a
more or less full schedule for no compensation whatsoever.
Why? Well, there is the love of the law. But there are other contributing
factors.
"I don't read books," Judge Beldock said.
"I've done all my traveling," he said.
And the city's glittering cultural life? "I'm not a big fan of museums.
I've been to them."
One of his three quite-grown children, Neil Beldock, 55, said in a separate
interview that it was almost as if his father had no choice: "I think he just
loves going to court and being in court every day."
Judge Beldock ruled out returning to practicing law, as he did for years
before Mayor John V. Lindsay appointed him to the bench in 1968. "I don't want
to deal with clients," he said.
But working, he added, does beat one of the alternatives. "Too many of my
friends that I did have over the years, when they stopped working or retired,
they died," he said with a matter-of-factness befitting a lifelong New Yorker.
Judges, all-powerful when they are sitting up a step or two on the bench,
evidently are just mortals. Judge Beldock said a dozen of them used to crowd
around a big table every day at the Flagship Diner on Queens Boulevard. These
days, he said, he is often the only one.
"They're dead," he said. "You'd be amazed. I could give you a list."
In reports and hearings, bar associations have bemoaned the loss of the
judicial hearing officers, saying that they helped the overburdened judiciary
keep some limits on ballooning court delays and that their decades of
experience could be useful. But the salad days for retired judges do seem to be
over.
For some of them, the end of their judging may be a little hard to take,
though they do get healthy pensions and good benefits. For Judge Beldock, the
per diem job also brought growing acknowledgment as the decades passed and he
became a senior statesman of the courts. The Daily News recognized him a couple
of years ago as the oldest state judge at work in the five boroughs. That was
before the cuts.
At first, while court officials were deciding whether to permit some of the
retirees to come back as volunteers, his new unemployment was strange. Long a
widower, Judge Beldock said he would be unsure how to begin the day if a tie
and a black robe were not involved. "I'd just feel, 'I gotta get up because I
gotta eat to live,' " he said. "I'd buy the paper and I would read."
Some paid judges and some lawyers disparage the volunteer judges as
dabblers. But in his courtroom the other day, some lawyers waiting for cases
said Judge Beldock seemed to be the real thing.
"He's still as sharp as I would imagine he was," said Bradley M. Wanner, a
young lawyer.
John J. Proios, a lawyer himself for 49 years, said Judge Beldock "is like
me, an old goat."
The task at hand, setting schedules for recently filed suits, was not too
demanding. But the proceedings may have seemed a touch more official because of
the white-haired gentleman on the bench, peering through bifocals, as judges
do.
In an interview, an appeals court judge with many years' experience in the
courts, Justice Randall T. Eng, said Judge Beldock had had that judicial look
since Mr. Eng first appeared before him as a young prosecutor in the early
1970s.
"He always had white hair," Justice Eng said. "He actually hasn't changed
much."
Judge Beldock said that even back at the beginning, he was proud of the
position.
"I'm called 'Judge' wherever I go," he said. Maybe you cannot put a price
on that.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/nyregion/judge-allen-beldock-92-still-on-queens-bench-but-without-pay.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha29&pagewanted=print
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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